Thursday, September 1, 2016

Trump's Immigration Shift Echoes Obama

Republican nominee has moved away from calling for a deportation force to expel all illegal immigrants to focusing on criminals

For more than a year, Donald Trump has cast President Barack Obama as too lax on illegal immigration. But the Republican nominee’s recent shift from calling for a deportation force to expel all illegal immigrants to focusing on criminals aligns his policy more closely with the current administration’s priorities.

Mr. Obama increasingly has focused on deporting felons, gang members, suspected terrorists and recent illegal border-crossers, while seeking to defer deportations of millions of illegal immigrants with children who are U.S. citizens.

Overall, the administration has deported a record number of illegal immigrants when those apprehended at or near the border are included in the tally, though the yearly number has been declining.

“We prioritize criminals,” Mr. Obama said in June after the Supreme Court blocked his plan to shield parents from deportation and give them work permits. “What we don’t do is to prioritize people who’ve been here a long time, who are otherwise law-abiding, who have roots and connections in their communities.”

Don't like what I said today? Wait until

tomorrow, I'll say the opposite

Mr. Trump is under pressure to offer more details about his policies in a speech on immigration Wednesday in Phoenix, after more than a week of conflicting explanations of where he stands on deportations, from both the GOP nominee and his advisers.

“Everybody agrees we get the bad ones out,” Mr. Trump said at a town hall hosted by Fox News last week, where he also suggested he would “work with” longtime residents with jobs and children, and that it would be a “very hard thing” to break up families.